Let me start from the beginning
As some of you might now, my name is Tasia and four years ago I was working in translation. I was 29 years old and had no Tech background at all. I never felt atracted to programming, never thought that computer engineering was even a posibility for me. At some point of 2019, fed of low salaries and even lower job conditions, I decided to flip my life around and began to study Linux System Administraion by myself.
Three years after that, here I am writing this post. Looks pretty straight forward, right? Well...No one actually knows how difficult it is to join the Tech sector without any previous experience or background untill they find themselves deep in the mud, trying to fit every piece of information into their brain. :) In this post I would like to tell you how I started to work with AWS without any tech background and how I got my first job that allowed me to work with AWS in production.
Systems Administration power up by AWS
First of all, I think it is very important to understad how much the public cloud and specially AWS mean for the Infrastructure profiles. Since the moment AWS appeared our vision of how an Infrastructure should look like and work started to change. The grumpy sysadmins started to dissapear and more easy-going Cloud Architects, DevOps engineers and SREs came in their place. The public cloud introduced giant changes in Technology and helped to open many doors but, as someone who works as SRE, one of the most amazing things that it boosted was the dignification of the "Infra" profiles.
System Administrators were no longer a different planet in the engineering world, we became part of the team. We had to work with the engineering team to build, improve and maintain giant infrastructures in AWS and as the maintainence overhead considerably decreased we now could work on other, more interesting, challenging and creative, things.
I found myself just in that moment: the pandemic started and somehow underlined our need for the cloud. When I first started to study I had no idea that AWS existed. I only knew that I could be a System Administrator but as the months went by I saw more and more JR cloud offers and I could already see where everything was headed.
But...How to start?
When I realized that apart from a deep knowledge of an OS and all the background I needed as System Administration I also had to redirect my career to a public cloud and everything that surrounds it I started to investigate. There were different cloud providers but the decision seemed easy: AWS had the majority of the market han seemed to be on the top of innovation and every single step. Let's be honest, when you are starting in Tech and have to learn 756274567 things, you have to optimize. Going for the biggest cloud provider was the smartest move. (Spoiler: didn't regret it)
When I started to study I wanted to gain as much of practical knowledge as possible. I had nothing to put in my CV related to tech so doing things was the way to prove myself. The first small project I accomplished was configuring a Wordpress website using Nginx and MariaDB in a RaspberryPi I had at home. Nothing fancy, just wanted to make it work. So when I decided to start in AWS the first step was pretty clear: I wanted to do just the same small thing but in AWS.
I discovered that there was a Free tier that I could use. IMPORTANT!: before doing anything in AWS learn how to set you billing alarms. Even if you are super careful and aware of the limits of the Free Tier its always a good idea to have a safety net, money goes fast in the cloud :)
Little by little, in my free time I started to learn what Services existed in AWS and how I could use them. AWS has one of the best and complete documentations I've ever seen so USE IT! Don't bother memorizing everything, that is too much. There are some people out there that know all the EC2 characteristics and pricing by heart but that is far from being neccessary, you will always have a chance to google something up if you don't remember it because the important thing in AWS is not being able to remember everything but rather be able to know the right way.
To achieve that you have a lot of information about AWS Well-Architected and also AWS Best Practices for each and every Service you can use. Stick to them, those recommendations exist for a reason :)
Furthermore there are TONS of courses and workshops you can participate in. Most of the big cities in the world also have AWS Users Groups where you can meet with people passionate about public cloud and learn a ton of interesting things. As you create content, participate in communities and gain knowledge about AWS you can also apply to become an AWS Community Builder to take your experience just a little bit further. The possibilities are endless, trust me!
How did I get my first chance to work with AWS in production
First of all: don't believe in magic. Even if you fall in love with AWS at first sight and start learning super fast, first opportunities do not appear suddently and quickly, you have to plan your career path and be constant.
What worked for me to get my first job where I could work with AWS (1 year after I started to work in the industry):
Be aware that your first jobs in Tech probably won't be fancy, won't be nice and probably will have no relation with AWS. Be patient. I worked as an intern first and then System Operator in shifts after before I got the first job I liked.
Actively participate in Tech communities: share, listen, communicate. That is a long run. My first great job offer came from Twitter, it reached the correct people because other people shared my enquiry about job offers, and those people shared because they already knew me as a nice and reliable person.
Do not overdo: choose wisely what places you want to be and what content you may want to generate. Don't write the same article many people wrote before you, don't study something just because Tech social media is talking about it. Elaborate your knowledge path and stick to it. All of this can be summarized as: focus on delivering value to yourself and to the communities you participate in.
When studying, more than becoming an expert in AWS focus your learning in understanding what AWS can provide. As I said before, it might be cool to know all EC2 instance types by heart, but its much more useful to know when to use and when not to use an EC2 instance because probably a Lambda is a better architectual choice.
4 years after...
Four years ago I was a translator, now I work in one of the most interesting Tech Companies in Spain, fully in AWS and expanding and improving our platform every day. One of the most important things that I can take from this journey so far is that being passionate about the public cloud and what it can improve in Tech made me grow better, not neccessary faster.
AWS is a rabbit hole and you will never reach the bottom of it. Somethimes you will feel overwhelmed and their rythim of growth may seem too much and sometimes you will feel excited because they just released a feature for a Service you now and it makes sense for you. Dosen't matter. Its a long journey, so we better just fu**ng enjoy it! :)
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